Trevor Lawrence is Poised for a Huge 2023

Trevor Lawrence’s rookie year was a disaster. As Ed documented extensively last offseason, there were plenty of concerns to his performance aside from the team around him and the turbulent coaching situation.

Specifically, his decision-making, vision, and over-reactiveness to pressure were red flags. While the idea of Lawrence becoming a bust was still not close to becoming likely (he’s just got too much talent), it was important that he show signs of growth in 2022.

And boy did he do just that. Look at the difference in his numbers from year 1 to year 2:

Sure it helped to have more talent around him. Not to mention, Doug Pederson’s offense played a key role in his success, giving him more options and answers on a regular basis.

Yet it was the traits that Lawrence showed consistently throughout 2022 that put to rest any concerns from his rookie season. To take it one step further, his performance had all the characteristics of what we generally see from the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

The two examples I’ll walk through below tell you everything you need to know about the type of player Lawrence can be in his third season and beyond.

This first example is a sequence of plays from Jacksonville’s come-from-behind Wild Card Playoff win against the Chargers.

After picking up a first down to start this drive in the third quarter, the Jaguars went no-huddle. They aligned in a 3x1 closed formation (3 receivers to one side and a tight end inline to the other). The Chargers would respond by playing cover-2 to the 3-receiver side and quarters to the closed side. Notice safety Derwin James sitting low to the quarters side:

The Jaguars would run for 8 yards:

They stayed in the no-huddle and came out in another 3x1 closed formation on the next play. The only difference here was that the 3 receivers were aligned in a bunch. The Chargers responded with the same defense, and the Jaguars ran it again:

After picking up a first down, Jacksonville stayed in the no-huddle and used the same formation. Only this time, they flipped it. The Chargers responded with what appeared to be the exact same look (predictability on defense is one of the benefits of using up-tempo/no-huddle). Lawrence recognized this and started communicating with his receivers, changing the play at the line:

The play Lawrence audibled to was designed specifically to break down this coverage.